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by Hadi Fornaji.
Tripoli, 17 July:
The Canadian government seized some $2.2 billion of Libyan assets held by members of the Qaddafi regime . . .[restrict]in their country. The ministry of foreign affairs and international trade in Ottawa as asserted that most of this money has now been returned to Libya.
However, because of Canadian privacy legislation, an undisclosed amount still remains, possibly running to tens of millions of dollars.
The Canadian government used the Freezing of Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act to hold money and property linked to crooked regimes in three Arab Spring countries,Libya, Egypt and Tunisia. Investigations into the rightful ownership of some of these assets are ongoing. An estimated $168 billion in Libyan assets around the world were frozen in 2011 under the UN sanctions.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police corporal Stephane Gagne told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: “The law essentially gives newly-installed governments time to get their ducks in a row and show Canada that the corrupt officials in question indeed owned the assets, usually paving the way for return of the monies to the new government.”
It was not possible this evening to establish the full extent of the suspect funds still frozen by the Canadians. In the wake of the Arab spring, the Canadian government has revealed that it froze $4.3 billion of funds, under the UN Special Economic Measures Act (SEMA) . This money came from Libya, Egypt and Tunisia. Assets linked to Syria were also frozen under SEMA but Ottawa has not disclosed the sum involved. [/restrict]
